We’re finally live!

on

We’re both super excited that you are finally able to read this and learn about a project we’ve been working on for over a year and a half.

Late 2015 I made a realization, I have a horrible memory. I suppose I made that realization years before, but it started to hit me in more ways. I couldn’t recall details of our past trips that Nicole could.  We would often be reminiscing about various trips and she would recount stories I had long forgotten. It was rather depressing. I stewed on it for a little while, but decided that I could do something about it. I could do a better job documenting our travels. I generally do a lot of photography and have maintained a travel blog on and off, but it didn’t quite hit the mark. It then occurred to me that I had a recurring itch since high school which I always just ignored. I ignored it mainly because I didn’t have an interesting enough subject matter to fuel this itch, or so I thought. I had finally put a few pieces together and we suddenly had a new hobby, or at least I did and Nicole agreed to play along.

Making videos was this itch. In high school I had the opportunity to experiment when one year an English class teacher handed out an assignment, make a short film. It was an unexpectedly fun experience.  I managed to mainly write, direct, shoot and edit the film, while the rest of my group members fumbled around in front of the camera.  This suited me just fine, as I had no interest of being in front of the camera, and what really interested me was editing it all together. It was all so crude back then. I filmed it all on a VHS camcorder, and edited the shots using two VCRs jerry rigged together with a monitor. The result was horribly bad, but I was bitten by the bug. Unfortunately for this bug, and likely fortunate for current me, another bug, with a stronger venom got me, and that was coding, writing computer software.

But maybe now was a chance to satisfy a few needs.  One to document the amazing trips that Nicole and I have been fortunate to be taking since our early 20s, and the other to get to explore the art of story telling through video. On top of this the technology for doing this at home has advanced dramatically since my high school days.  I could now get a pocket camera capable of shooting 4K video, and editing software was super sophisticated and approachable. And the icing on the cake was that we had an incredible amount of travel ahead of us for 2016, as we were just closing out a rare year where we hadn’t traveled once. It seemed like a perfect storm to give this a try.

I did my research and picked out my camera and patiently waited for boxing week sales to be announced hoping my selection would go on sale. Luck was on my side when it did, and we picked it up along with some accessories I thought would make sense for this venture and we patiently waited for our first trip to being in late February.

Fast forward to today, July 25th 2017, and we have a lot of documenting under our belts.  Since I picked up our camera late December 2015 we have filmed 7 trips for a total of 125 days, which is almost 18 weeks. 6 countries, a few multiple times.  All in all we have recorded 3.5TB of video footage. It’s been amazing and challenging. It’s not easy walking around pointing a camera at yourself wherever you go, trying to be interesting and thinking ahead of how a story might unfold. Getting enough shots to make a cohesive video. Figuring out what resolutions to shoot at, what frame rate to use. How to back up all this footage. Where to find the time and energy to edit the footage once home from vacation. And learning how to put it all together on YouTube. It’s been really tough with this merely being a hobby and all. But it has been a lot of fun, and it’s starting to satisfy the needs that led to this all beginning. I’ve enjoyed having a creative outlet and slowly improving at telling stories. It’s been a lot of fun reliving our trips through the footage that we have captured, and it has triggered memories of things I would have  normally forgotten.

But something else has emerged which I hadn’t predicted, the fun of sharing our adventures with friends and family. As we have gotten closer to finally putting our channel live we have shared the first couple videos with a few friends for feedback. It’s been really rewarding getting their impressions and feedback, but more importantly it’s been very touching to be able to share our experiences with others in ways that was never possible before.

And so, we’re really happy to finally being able to share with you all. If you’ve come to take a look we thank you! We encourage you to share your feedback and thoughts through the comments on YouTube. Please let us know what you think, hearing peoples reactions has been the surprise fulfillment of putting this all together.

Mike & Nicole

2 Comments Add yours

  1. Ali says:

    Congratulations, the site looks great!

    1. Mike says:

      Thanks, it’s coming along!

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